News

Felix Ekardt on "Growth - A Hard Habit to Break

A contribution in the Global Compact International Yearbook deals with fundamental issues of the sustainability debate: the limits to green growth and technological
innovations, the preconditions of societal transformation towards sustainability, the complexity of human motivation, the underrated ambitiousness of the long-term goal
in the Paris Climate Agreement. See, among other papers, here.

Phosphorus, Scarcity of Natural Resources, and the Law

During the last years, the Research Unit Sustainability and Climate
Policy has done a lot of research on questions of phosphorus and
scarcity of natural resources, as well as on land-use and climate change
- from a transdisciplinary point of view.
See, among other papers, Economic Instruments for P, N, Climate, Biodiv.

Universalism, Discourse Ethics, and Objectivity of Norms

The Research Unit Sustainability and Climate Policy has done a lot of
research on the normative grounds of sustainability - respectively on
the theoretical basis of both ethics and law. The most informative is
the big German volume "Theorie der Nachhaltigkeit", but there is also a
number of English papers. See, among other papers, here.

Felix Ekardt on various international conferences

Since 2007, Felix Ekardt has given speeches and presentations on some
60 international conferences on questions of sustainability, climate
change, justice, human rights, phosphorus scarcity, land-use, etc. For
details and also for forthcoming speeches, see the list of presentations.

Distributive Justice, Climate Economics, Land Use and Climate, Phosphorus

In the course of this month, four studies for different government authorities on the above-mentioned subjects in some different versions - in English and German - will be published (also) on this homepage, see e.g. here.

Sustainability, climate protection and resource politics as issues of justice

Problems of sustainability in energy, climate and resource scarcity or land use raise questions of social change, political and legal instruments and improved technologies.
However, they also trigger questions on ethic and legal requirements. Are we allowed to “not care” about future generations and continue to foster climate change in view of human
rights? For many years, these questions are addressed by the Research Unit, namely by Felix Ekardt. Contrary to common perception, both Germany and Europe as a whole are far
from reaching their climate targets. Inconvenient truths such as the necessity to continuously increase costs of fossil fuels are not discussed. We analyze how societies and
individuals change and are thus able to contribute to a real and global energy transition, even though desires of daily life are often in contradiction. We explain why German
and European leadership (even in an economic sense) is crucial and why new lifestyles are not a restriction but a necessary element of freedom and social justice. On the
occasion of the Paris climate negotiations, we have furthermore shown and calculated in detail how much emission reductions and financing would have been needed, portraying
the example of Germany. The results present a stark contrast to what has really been discussed by now.